Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 4

22 August 2023

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Title: For Information

Inform­a­tion Requests Update

Pre­pared by: Paul Dav­is­on, Inform­a­tion Manager

Pur­pose

This paper provides an update on the num­ber of inform­a­tion requests, and key per­form­ance meas­ures in meet­ing them, under the Free­dom of Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Act / Envir­on­ment­al Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions arrange­ments since April 2021.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Note activ­ity in this area and Author­ity per­form­ance b) Com­ment on breadth and depth of report­ing for future updates

Activ­ity

1. As a pub­lic body, Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity is sub­ject to stat­utory require­ments under the Free­dom of Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Act (FOISA) and also the Envir­on­ment­al Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions (EIR). This paper provides an update on the num­ber of inform­a­tion requests under these pro­vi­sions received in the last three fin­an­cial years and the first quarter of 2023/2024, and per­form­ance in key meas­ures. Pre­vi­ous years’ inform­a­tion is provided for bench­mark­ing pur­poses. All fig­ures relate to the time peri­od in which the request was first received.

2. Since the begin­ning of Fin­an­cial Year 2021/2022, two-thirds of requests have been classed as, and respon­ded to under, FOISA legis­la­tion and the remainder under EIR arrange­ments. Total request num­bers in 2022/2023 were sig­ni­fic­antly lower than those seen in the two pre­vi­ous years. The cur­rent fin­an­cial year 2023/2024 is show­ing a sim­il­ar lower level with six requests in Q1. Fig­ures are sum­mar­ised in Table 1.

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Table 1: Num­ber of FOISA/EIR Requests Received, 2020/2021 to date

Request Type	Fin­an­cial Year 2020/2021	Fin­an­cial Year 2021/2022	Fin­an­cial Year 2022/2023	2023/2024 Q1
FOISA	21	25	20	6
EIR	14	17	8	0
Total	37	42	29	6
% FOISA	57%	60%	69%	100%

1. The most rel­ev­ant per­form­ance meas­ure for all requests is the pro­por­tion of requests met with­in stat­utory times­cales (which may vary depend­ing on the nature of the request). Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity per­form­ance in respond­ing to requests is gen­er­ally very good and has been above 95% over the last 3 years. A per­form­ance bench­mark fig­ure¹ for all Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Bod­ies (NDPBs) in Scot­land (2013−2020) is 85% for FOIs and 88% for EIRs.

2. The num­ber of intern­al review requests remains low, with only 2 in 2021/2022 and 1 in 2022/2023. The out­come of these were that 2 were not upheld and in one, fur­ther inform­a­tion was provided. No refer­rals to the Scot­tish Inform­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er have occurred since the fin­an­cial year 2020/2021. Fig­ures are sum­mar­ised in Table 2.

Table 2: Per­form­ance Over­view, ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ to date

	Fin­an­cial Year 20⁄21	Fin­an­cial Year 21⁄22	Fin­an­cial Year 22⁄23	23⁄24 Q1
Met with­in Stat­utory Timescales	97%	95%	97%	100%
Intern­al Review Requests	2	2	1	0
Refer­ral to Scot­tish Inform­a­tion Commissioner	1	0	0	0

1. From the fin­an­cial year 2021/2022 to date, the dis­tri­bu­tion of requests across the organ­isa­tion is shown in Fig­ure 1. Cor­por­ate Ser­vices encom­passes the largest num­ber and includes all cor­por­ate requests which can­not be cat­egor­ised spe­cific­ally to areas such as Human Resources, ICT which are shown indi­vidu­ally. Planning &

¹Source: Scot­land Inform­a­tion Request Stat­ist­ics (myso​ci​ety​.org)

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Place and Con­ser­va­tion share a sim­il­ar num­ber of requests, which of course can vary sig­ni­fic­antly in breadth and complexity.

Fig­ure 1: Requests by Ser­vice Area, ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂ to date

(The fig­ure is a bar chart and can­not be repro­duced in this mark­down format.)